Posts tagged Dominica

Blue Parrot Artisan Coffee

October 8, 2025 0 Comments Coffee, Garden Journal

About two years after hurricane Maria, when most things were starting to look normal again and greenery, though comprised predominantly of vines, had begun to return to the mountain, I paid a visit to my neighbour, Vovo. A prominent member of the Giraudel Flower Growers group, I’d known her for quite a while. Her house and garden, though still a little scarred, were looking homely again. She has a lovely garden, perhaps the closest to an English cottage garden that I’ve ever seen in this part of the world, with a wide variety of flowering plants filling every little space. She also had a large shade tent – now sadly ragged and in need of new netting – where she grew anthuriums and roses of many types and colours that she used in arrangements – usually wreathes and bouquets – which she sold to make ends meet. I’ve often used her garden as in informal nursery, paying for far less than she manages to cram into my bucket. On this particular day, I was looking for coffee.

Vovo had told me that although she had had an Arabica tree for years, she had never harvested the cherries. She just pruned it every now and then, using it as a windbreak for some of her more delicate plants and cuttings. All around it grew Arabica seedlings and it wasn’t long before I had a bucketful.

Back home, I planted them out in growing bags, watered them well, and left them in the shade of a night-blooming jasmine tree. This was the beginning of my coffee journey.

Today, I have four rows of Arabica ‘trees’ – I prune them to head-height after every season – with a narrow dirt path between them for inspecting, pruning, and harvesting. Altogether, there are just over 50 trees with around 35 currently mature enough to produce cherries. They sit right at the back of my garden, behind the house, on a slope in front of the eastern windbreak. The elevation is almost exactly 2,000 feet.

Before hurricane David in 1979, the farmer who owned and worked the land we now call ours, and which was part of a much larger estate, grew oranges here and referred to this little corner as Orange Field. The hurricane destroyed his estate and broke his heart. He never returned to farming and instead decided to sell off part of his land in small parcels. Orange Field was never worked again and lay fallow. The soil is therefore fertile and free of manmade chemicals.

In 2022, I travelled to Colombia, visiting the cities of Bogota and Medellin. I also went to a coffee farm about two hours out of Medellin and learned about coffee farming and processing first-hand. I also learned what a labour-intensive process it is. This particular farm, sitting at an elevation near to 6,000 feet, grew around 400 acres of Arabica coffee and employed the whole village when it was time to pick cherries. One of the most valuable things I learned was how to properly prune and pick ripe cherries – rolling them to leave the stem on the plant. A healthy stem flowers and produces cherries again next season. I also learned that medium roast is the best way to bring out the taste of the bean (according to my Colombian teachers). They said that if you like stronger coffee, you just add more, but you never roast dark. They also said Peruvian coffee stinks of lama shit. The Colombians believe their coffee to be the best in the world. Who am I to argue?

I usually begin picking ripe cherries in September, but this year they were about six weeks early. The mountain has certainly been feeling warmer. I practice selective picking, taking only the ripe ones. Once started, I usually have to harvest every two weeks until the festive season. This is when I prune the trees down to head height and remove any second stems that have sprouted during the growing season.

After I’ve finished picking, I pulp the cherries. In the beginning, I did this by hand with buckets and a potato masher. But that was nuts. So I imported a small manual pulper from Colombia which turns a five hour job into five minutes. Its a clever piece of machinery, splitting and separating the beans from the pulp. When I’ve finished, I have a bucket of pulp and a bucket of beans. The pulp goes back to the coffee trees as fertilizer.

I wash the coffee beans and then leave them to sit in water for a few minutes, allowing the bad beans to rise to the surface. I remove these and then wash them again. Now, I leave the beans to sit in a bucket of water overnight to allow a small amount of fermentation to take place. The next day, I wash the beans thoroughly and then spread them out on a homemade drying rack that sits in the sunshine and is covered at nighttime.

If there’s decent sunshine, the beans are usually dry after about a week. I turn them several times a day. Then I store them in hessian bags for about four more weeks.

Hulling the dry beans is a manual process – literally one at a time on a Saturday morning while I listen to English football commentary via web radio. I’ve looked up ways to automate this process but have found none of them satisfactory. Blenders usually cause too much destruction to the bean and you still have to filter out the husks. Some people stuff beans into bicycle inner tubes and roll them – but that’s just nuts. So, unless I come across the perfect tool, I’ll continue to shell each one manually in a Zen-like state of mind, listening to my team lose again.

Immediately after hulling a pile of beans I roast them. My roaster is cheap and simple – basically a hotplate with a rotating bar, lid, and temperature control. Through trial and error, I’ve figured out a combination of temperature and time that works well enough, giving me a pretty even medium roast. I’ve thought about upgrading, of course, but I’m alright for now.

It’s my aim to make enough coffee to last us the whole year while also having enough to give to family and friends as gifts. I’m pretty close. I think when all 50 trees are producing, I’ll easily reach that goal. I’m not interested in producing my Blue Parrot coffee commercially. When I enjoy a cup on my porch, looking out at the sea, it’s rewarding enough.

Undeterred by the rain

September 21, 2025 0 Comments Garden Journal, Wildlife

Hummingbirds have been plentiful in the garden since spring. I usually see the purple-throat, the Antillean crested, and the green-throated. I have actually seen Dominica’s fourth hummingbird species – the blue-headed – but only one or twice.

I believe this is a female Antillean crested hummingbird that, despite the morning rain, still flies and feeds at a scarlet firespike. I love the beads of rain on its waterproof head feathers.

Annatto ready for picking

September 21, 2025 0 Comments Garden Journal, Plants in bloom

Annatto (roucou and urucu in the language of indigenous people of South America – often attributed to Tupi where it’s meaning is ‘red colour’) is the name given to the seeds of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana), now grown worldwide, though thought to originate in South and Central America. The waxy arils that cover each seed within the pod are extracted for their red-orange pigment that are commonly used as a condiment and food colouring. Originally, the indigenous people of the Americas and Caribbean used the dye as a body paint.

The small tree in my garden is now covered in bright red seed pods that are ready for picking. I’m going to use the annatto in cooking but I also want to experiment and try to make a watercolour paint from it.

Postscript

Here’s my effort at making watercolour paint. I blended crushed seeds with a mixture of gum Arabic and honey. I’m calling the colour urucu.

Feral honeybees

September 20, 2025 0 Comments Garden Journal, Pollinators

Feral honeybee in Dominica by Paul Crask

This is a Western honeybee (Apis mellifera).

Despite our love of honeybees for honey production, crop pollination and so on, it’s important to remember that they’re not native to Dominica or the Caribbean. They’re an introduced species. This one is feral but its ancestors would have been imported and managed in hives.

There are actually bees that are native to Dominica, one of which is thought to be endemic – Hylaeus (Hylaeana) dominicalis, but native bees seem to be poorly studied and understood, and we don’t know much at all about the impact of introduced honeybees on native populations, or how ecosystems are affected.

In this photo that I took in my garden this afternoon, you can clearly see the orange pollen basket on the hind legs – a signature trait of honeybees. There were about 20 individuals foraging on cosmos flowers in the late afternoon.

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian newspaper (18 Sept 2025) called “The island that banned hives: can honeybees actually harm nature?” that describes an attempt to measure the impact of honeybees on native bee populations.

The Collective Canvas: Dominica’s Art Revolution

September 9, 2025 Comments Off Freelance

The Waitukubuli Artist Association (WAA) – named after the indigenous Kalinago word for Dominica – is a collective of more than ninety artists working across a wide range of disciplines – from painting and photography to sculpture and performance arts. The association was founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, inspired by one of Dominica’s most notable contemporary artists, the late and great Earl Darius Etienne. His nephew, Lowell “Omtni” Royer – an accomplished artist in his own right – was persuaded to take on the leadership role, resulting in him putting his own creative work on hold for six years while helping the association take root and grow.

I met with him in his studio near Roseau, joined by current president and documentary filmmaker and photographer Michael Lees, and vice-president and digital illustrator Jenae Bell, to discuss the group’s accomplishments, its role in shaping Dominica’s art and culture landscape, and its aspirations for the future.

In the early days, Lowell was a reluctant leader, juggling multiple roles and single-handedly driving the association forward. “But I fell in love with helping other artists,” he says. “That’s what really motivated me to answer the call.”

He explains that his uncle Earl believed artists would benefit far more by working together than in isolation – especially when it came to engaging with government bodies, accessing funding, and supporting each other creatively. “Some artists are shy and lack confidence,” Lowell says. “Being part of a group gives them strength and a voice. Others didn’t even see themselves as artists because they didn’t paint – but of course they were. The group gave them that confidence.”

The association’s appeal is especially strong among young people, with around seventy percent of its members between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and a roughly equal gender split. Though it began as a visual arts group, it has grown into a diverse organisation encompassing a range of creative disciplines. Recent additions include WaituCirque – a budding circus arts troupe – and Mission Improvable and the WAA Actors Collective, focused on acting and improvisational performance.

Helping members develop their skills is a core priority. The association has established regular classes that begin with foundational techniques, with plans to expand further. “I’d also like for us to work on developing the sustainability of the organization – attracting grassroots funding, being able to compensate those who are doing a lot of heavy lifting for the association and helping members earn a living from their work,” Michael says.

As WAA has grown and embraced diversity, its leadership has focused on formalising systems such as membership structure, accounting and contract management. Commissioned street art and murals are currently the association’s main source of income. “We’ve completed around twenty across the island,” says Michael, “on themes ranging from agriculture and tourism to climate change and marine conservation.” The work has been well received. “One visitor watching us paint a whale mural on the Roseau Bay Front told us it was the highlight of her cruise,” Lowell recalls.

“For me, the murals are also about creating community,” Jenae adds. “Artists are great individually, but when we work together, we create something none of us could achieve alone. We raise our game. That’s one of the fundamental benefits of this association – and one of the reasons it was formed. As we continue working together, sharpening our skills and thinking more deeply about society, we have a chance to elevate the dialogue through our art.”

In that spirit, WAA has begun engaging more directly with contemporary social and geopolitical issues — from freedom of expression to the conflict in Gaza. Recent events have included panel discussions, film screenings, and exhibitions. Their latest, for example, was titled Echoes of Resilience: Standing Against Cultural Loss and Global Oppression.”

“Art can create a space for people to express themselves that isn’t just on Facebook and other social media,” Jenae says. “Again, it’s about community – a place where people feel they can talk freely about what’s going on, what’s on their minds.”

As the association’s public profile grows – Jenae notes that people now simply refer to them as “the artists” – WAA is gaining confidence in its potential to shape Dominica’s creative future.

“As we’ve come together and done all this work on our own, it’s attracted attention – which brings opportunity, strength and confidence,” Michael says. “We’re always open to partnering with government bodies for projects like the murals and, more recently, the annual Jazz and Art event. But we also want to propose ways in which the government can support the growth of art and artists in Dominica. One obvious step would be removing import duties on art materials – it’s just too expensive for most artists to get supplies here. At the same time, we must walk a fine line between building and maintaining strong relationships, understanding the economic constraints of our country, and continuing to provide practical support for our members.”

“In terms of influence, I’d like to see a change in how art and creativity are taught in schools,” Jenae adds. “Even if you don’t eventually become an artist, spending time learning about art helps you think, see, and do things differently – especially if you’re exposed to it from a young age. We have something special with WAA. It’s an opportunity to reinvent how art is perceived in Dominica – and, in turn, how Dominica is perceived abroad. Artists should really be cultural ambassadors because we’re deeply inspired by our country. We could even play a more active role in shaping new aspects of tourism.”

“I agree,” says Michael. “I think there’s an innate creativity in Dominicans that’s almost baked in. We just need to remove the guardrails that keep people stuck doing things the way they’ve always been done.”

The growth and success of WAA are especially notable in a region where few similar organisations have taken root and endured. Connecting with artists across the eastern Caribbean is one of the group’s next goals.

“A beautiful thing that’s happening right now is a relationship we’re building with artists from Martinique,” Michael says. “It’s in its infancy, but we’re talking about a long-term collaboration that could lead to some exciting artistic outcomes.”

While many movements come and go, WAA stands out for its solid foundation, collaborative spirit, and clear sense of purpose. Together with its youthful demographic, it has the potential to grow and broaden its influence. At its heart is a grassroots movement with a deep passion for art, for country, and for fellow artists. Lowell expresses this beautifully:

“I love art so much, I can’t conceive of not being a part of WAA. I also think that if we continue to help put Dominica on the map through our art and our connections, it can only be a good thing. I really believe the association is becoming an increasingly important asset to Dominica.”

To learn more and connect:

Kubuliarts.com

@kubuliarts on Instagram and Facebook

This article featured in the September/October 2025 edition of Caribbean Beat magazine. Photos courtesy of WAA.

Fighting Back

September 9, 2025 Comments Off Archive

This article was written and photographed by me and published in the first edition of Dominica Traveller magazine in 2015.

On the brink of extinction for a decade, Dominica’s most famous amphibian, the mountain chicken, survives by a precarious thread. But protection and research are beginning to suggest there may be a faint glimmer of hope.

JENNY SPENCER asks me to step into a bath of disinfectant when I enter. “Just to be on the safe side,” she says. “So you don’t bring any of the disease in here with you.” I do as I am asked and step into the shallow purple-coloured liquid and look around. The small building contains several enclosed pens, each sealed by plastic sheeting and mesh, and with doors that are bolted shut. It’s humid inside, and there’s a faint aroma I can’t place. I suddenly feel inexplicably anxious.

The disease Jenny is referring to is chytridiomycosis, also known as amphibian chytrid fungus. There are about 1,000 species of chytrid fungus that live in water or moist environments around the world and, in 1999, a new species was identified called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd for short, and it has infected amphibians around the globe, many of which develop chytridiomycosis and very quickly die. Here, on this island, it has almost entirely wiped out the Leptodactyllus fallax, known by Dominicans as the crapaud or the mountain chicken.

Jenny works for the Zoological Society of London and her aim is simple: to save the mountain chicken from extinction; for Dominica and nearby Montserrat are the only places on earth where mountain chickens live in the wild.

“It’s hard to know for certain what the island population is now, but based on how few we find during our field work, we’re probably talking about less than a hundred. But you never know. We have just five in here right now; three males and two females. We had more, but the disease got in a while back.”

Jenny used to work in the reptile house at Bristol Zoo in the UK, followed by a stint at the Amsterdam Zoo. This is her third trip to Dominica. She came in 2011, 2012 and 2014 for roughly six months at a time.

“Amphibians are my passion,” she smiles. “I even have a room full of frogs in my home in Amsterdam. I bet that sounds a bit weird,” she realises and laughs. But this passion has brought Jenny back to Dominica and she has grown very attached to the mountain chicken and the challenge of trying to save it.

The building we are in is in the Botanic Gardens in Roseau. It is a captive breeding facility, which is trying to maintain a back-up population of the mountain chicken on Dominica just in case they don’t survive at all in the wild. When the disease was first detected here and on Montserrat, several thousand were evacuated to Europe in a dramatic attempt to avoid total extinction and specimens are now found in zoos across Europe.

Food for the five frogs is also bred here; and plastic bins are alive with an assortment of crickets and forest cockroaches which she enjoys showing me.

“The forest cockroaches are very pretty, look,” she says, reaching in and pulling one out. “And the Jamaican crickets are my particular favourites. Now I really do sound weird, don’t I ?”

While the disease is everywhere, it doesn’t harm every amphibian it touches. The tree frogs that live here on Dominica have the disease too, yet they don’t get sick from it for reasons scientists don’t yet understand. But they do pass it on, and that is a major concern.

“And there are so many tree frogs,” she says. “So it’s completely impossible to control the spread of the disease to more vulnerable species such as the mountain chicken.”

Red and peeling skin is the usual sign of a diseased frog. Because mountain chickens breathe and absorb liquids through their skin, they are very vulnerable to water-borne infection of any kind. The Bd species of chytrid fungus that causes chytridiomycosis (mycosis = a disease caused by a fungus) makes the skin very thick and so the transfer of air, water and minerals becomes impossible. The heart stops beating and the animal dies.

“Rivers and streams that may have traces of pesticides and other farming chemicals are potentially another big problem for them,” Jenny explains. “And they get stressed easily. The dry season stresses them and so they try to hide in deep natural burrows where they can find areas that are cool, dark and damp during the day. The females also get stressed after laying eggs when they don’t eat very much. Disease and contaminated water exploits this weakness, of course.”

So is Jenny fighting a losing battle to save the mountain chicken ? “It can seem that way but there is hope,” she says forthrightly. “When the first outbreak of the disease hit the island at the turn of the millennia, and decimated the population, a few survived. They were strong, or ‘persistent’ enough, perhaps they even had some kind of natural resistance. We don’t know, and scientists are studying this phenomena with interest. But what we are discovering is that the few mountain chickens we have been finding in the wild in Dominica recently show little or no sign of falling sick from the disease. This is encouraging of course and we hope this means that the small population that has survived is now passing on some kind of resistance or immunity to their offspring. But it’s a very fragile situation and much is still unknown.”

Jenny goes out on night-time field trips every week to specific locations where small mountain chicken populations are still living in the wild. If she finds them, she gives them a health check, records their details and then releases them.

“The field trip locations are a secret,” she smiles. “But if you promise not to tell anyone where they are, you can come along if you like.”

A couple of weeks later I’m in a pick-up truck with Jenny and two colleagues from the Forestry, Wildlife & Parks Division, Ronnie and Sylvester. As our destination is a secret I’m half expecting to be blindfolded or have a bag pulled over my head but I am, thankfully, spared the indignity. It’s a clear night and the dry season has made the western margins of the island as crispy and flammable as tinder. Not an especially good combination for discovering creatures that like damp places.

“They tend to move out of the forest down towards water sources when the weather is like this,” Jenny explains. “And that’s where we’ve been finding them recently. Down by the rivers. As soon as it starts raining again they’ll stop making this migration as often and stay up in the forest instead.”

The locations of these night-time field trips is kept secret because people still hunt the frog for food, despite a ban and despite it almost becoming extinct. Not too long ago, the mountain chicken was Dominica’s national dish. It seems some people still have a taste for it.

We arrive and check equipment and flashlights. There is no moon and the night sky is full of stars. The forest is still and silent. To our right is a small river. Jenny tells me that during the last few years over twenty different frogs have been sighted and recorded here.

“It’s a real shame it isn’t raining,” she whispers as we make our way through the darkness. It isn’t a sentiment I especially share until she explains that rain would probably make the frogs call out and thus make them easier to find. Instead we have to rely on ‘eye-shine’, the reflection of the frogs’ eyes in the beams of our flashlights.

It isn’t long before Jenny spots something.

“Eye-shine,” she says. “Over there in the woods. See it ?”

My eyes strain in their sockets as I search the darkness trying to see what she sees. I’m embarrassed, for I can see nothing at all.

“I think it’s probably just a lizard in any case,” she says, sympathetically, and indeed it turned out to be just that.

A little later, after further searching, we hear a splashing in the river. It’s Ronnie. He’s discovered a frog but it has eluded him and we find him chasing around in the water trying to find it again. Reluctantly he gives up and we all continue up river in the darkness.

Jenny explains that whenever they find and catch a frog they check to see if it is one that they have seen before – each receives a digital identification chip – and then they measure and weigh it, look for any sign of the disease and, if it is a new one, they take identifying photographs. Each frog has slightly different skin markings.

“There,” Jenny says, stopping in her tracks. “A frog. See it ?”

This time I do. It’s a large female mountain chicken, sitting on top of a dry palm frond by the margins of the river, looking away from us into the water. Slowly and as silently as he can through the dry and crispy bush, Ronnie creeps up behind it until it is within reach. We all hold our breaths and daren’t move or make a sound. He flicks out an arm and grabs the frog before it has a chance to jump away. Our first catch of the evening.

Jenny scans the frog for an identification chip. It has one, so she checks it against her records.

“This is Courtney Love,” she smiles. “We like to give them names.”

Courtney Love seems rather subdued and gives Jenny cause for concern. She also has a few worrying marks on her skin. Jenny carefully swabs Courtney – the results will be processed back in London at a later date – and she measures and weighs her before we release her into the river. If Courtney has the disease, she would be the first case in this particular location.

On our return journey we are keen to find the frog that eluded Ronnie earlier and he spots eye-shine coming from beneath another dry palm frond on the far river bank. As stealthily as possible he makes his way through the water towards it but, before he can get close enough, it leaps high into the air and dives into a deep pool. Now we all splash around, shining our flashlights into the water, until we eventually catch it.

Also electronically tagged, but as yet with no name, this is a male frog that was first recorded in January 2014 when it weighed a mere 94 grams and was too small to determine gender. Now he weighs 310 grams; impressive and encouraging growth over just 18 months. He is lively and shows no sign of the disease.

“You know, it’s a shame he doesn’t have a name yet,” Jenny grins. “I think I may have to give him yours.”

Storm Dancers

August 31, 2025 Comments Off Archive

This article was written and photographed by me and published in the second edition of Dominica Traveller magazine in 2016.

Refugees in their own country, I first met the members of the Dubique Cultural Group at the Grand Bay Community Centre where they had been living for almost a year since the passage of tropical storm Erika in August 2015. The village of Dubique is on the south coast of Dominica, nestled around a small river and tightly sandwiched between tall, steep volcanic cliffs that run to the sea. During the storm, the river became a torrent, tearing away the single village road, destroying property and ultimately forcing evacuation and abandonment. Though many homes remained standing, the government deemed the village too dangerous and its inhabitants were offered temporary shelter in and around the nearby community of Grand Bay.

People seemed to fill every inch of the community centre’s upper floor. Laundry hung all around, children cried, women chatted on steps, and the smell of cooking drifted across the still afternoon. An old man sat alone on a bench, staring vacantly ahead, as if he were still watching the river burst its banks and tear down utility poles and trees.

Outside the building, a tarpaulin stretched over makeshift wooden pews and a lectern. This is where the group members and I sat in the sultry heat of the afternoon, weighing each other up, talking about the group, the storm, cultural heritage, and the article I would like to write about them.

Formed in 2003, the group currently has nine members, seven of whom are women. Most are related as cousins and have common ancestral ties to a cultural icon of Grand Bay, Ma Tutu. A prominent member of the community, Ma Tutu was responsible for passing down Creole traditions of music, dance and dress. These traditions find their roots in colonial Dominica and enslavement.

Although the British and the French had agreed in 1680 to leave Dominica to the indigenous Kalinago, a trickle of migrants from the neighbouring French island of Martinique began to arrive in the early 1700s and settlements were established, gradually forcing the Kalinago into the less accessible hinterlands. They arrivals occupied the area that is now known as Grand Bay. They spread across the south west to Soufriere and up to Roseau, bringing with them enslaved Africans to work on their estates.

During this period of European colonisation, the Kalinago became ever more marginalised and French and later British estates sprang up all around the island. Although Dominica was eventually ceded to the British, it was the proximity of the French islands, mixed with surviving African tribal traditions such as dance, dress, food, belief systems and language, that came together to form French Creole. This fusion of heritage and tradition dominated the cultural landscape and remains strong in the south of Dominica and particularly in the Grand Bay area.

Commonly worn by women from as far back as the 1800s right up to the 1960s, the wob dwiyet is now only ever donned by cultural groups or during periods of Creole and Independence celebrations in October and November each year. It began life as a dress that was worn on Sundays or Feast Days when enslaved women were able to discard drab uniforms and wear something more colourful. Over the years the style of wob dwiyet has been modified and accessories have been added, but the basic combination of bright madras skirt over white chemise, often with lace adornments, coloured head scarf and kerchief, is in essence the same as the dress that was worn under enslavement. The wearer of the wob dwyet is known as the matador and for more formal occasions she may also choose to wear a headpiece, or tête en l’air, made of a square piece of madras. Central to the wob dwiyet’s colour, madras was originally Indian cotton, known as injiri, made by the Kalabari people in the vicinity of Chennai (formerly Madras). French, English and Portuguese merchants were involved in its trade and are thought to have brought it to west Africa where it became popular with Igbo tribal women.

During their performances, the members of the Dubique Cultural Group wear modern madras styles and variations of traditional wob dwiyet. Their repertoire includes a number of dance forms but it is for their interpretation and performance of the bélé that they are particularly noted.

The bélé is a dance of African origin that is accompanied by a song that is sung in Creole. The centrepiece of the dance is the drum, known as the tambou twavail or tambou bélé. It is a traditional goat skin, or la peau cabwit, drum that provides a resonating rhythm along with strong echoes of Africa. The group’s drummer, Carlton Merrifield, known by all as Abio, tells me he remembers playing the drum with Ma Tutu when he was a child.

“It’s been a passion ever since,” he smiles.

The dance moves reflect a courtship between a man and a woman as they move in turn towards the drum, responding to its rhythm. By the time the dance reaches its conclusion the drum is booming loudly and the man and the woman are dancing together with quick steps and vigorous body movements, symbolising their union.

After we have talked and relaxed into each other’s company, we arrange to meet again in a couple of weeks. I asked them how they would feel about returning to Dubique, to tell me about what happened during the storm, and to perform a bélé among the ruins of the abandoned village. I am excited when they eagerly agree to the idea.

Two weeks later we head up the narrow village road as far as we can before it ends; severed in two by the power of water, mud and rocks. Houses still stand around us and I meet a woman carrying a container of water on her head that she has fetched from a spring higher up the valley. She stops to say hello and I learn that she comes back here to live from time to time.

“Until it rains,” she says. “Then I go back to the community centre. But I don’t like it there. This is my home.”

While changing into their traditional costumes, some members of the group tell me that they too have returned to Dubique on occasion since the storm, to collect belongings or to harvest produce from their yards. A couple of them have spent the night, but they tell me it had been a strange, rather unnerving experience. Looking around, it is very easy to understand why. The vertiginous cliffs and narrow river valley mean there is no easy escape. During the storm, some of the group managed to get to higher ground, away from the torrent. Some stood on flat rooftops or verandas out of reach of the water, others scrambled down the valley to the coast. All agree it was terrifying.

Despite this, there is a sense of shoulder-shrugging and just getting on with life; something I have often seen in Dominica by a people who seem determined not to let an event like this bother them too much; or at least, if it does, not to show it outwardly. I ask them if returning to Dubique makes them emotional in any way.

‘For sure, a little,” says Nadia, the group’s lead dancer. “But I suppose we are accustomed by now.”

I remind myself that almost a year has passed and that the events of that night would surely have faded by now, but I can see on their faces as they look around and explain to me what happened, that there is still a sense of loss and bewilderment. They have homes here, many still standing, but they cannot return to them on a permanent basis.

“It’s too dangerous,” some of them say in unison.

The group members receive no financial assistance to do what they do and the money for the madras and the seamstress work comes out of their own pockets. When I think about this and look at these nine people before me, I realise how fragile the continuation of cultural tradition really is. Despite everything that has happened to them, and how difficult it is to make ends meet, they choose to go on dancing.

Fully attired in bright madras and wob dwyet, the group assembles near the wide break in the village road. Abio positions himself on an old chair he has borrowed from a nearby building and starts to beat his drum. Miriam, Julia, Juline, Esther and Corinthia begin to sing, and a shiver runs down my spine. The song that accompanies bélé is in Creole, often a conversation between a man and a woman, either portraying the despair of enslavement, or of the joy of liberation. For enslaved workers on estates Creole became a way of communicating in a language that their masters may not have easily been able to understand and the lyric describing a simple conversation disguised a deeper meaning yet further. They perform such a song now; about a woman lending a man a shirt, but instead of wearing it, he uses it to collect wawa, a type of wild yam that was commonly eaten and traded at the time.

Barefooted, Nadia and Leon dance on the road in front of the drum, moving away from and then closer to each other, Nadia spreading her madras skirt and Leon raising his arms like wings. Colourful, beautiful and against an enchanting accompaniment of song, it is like watching a courtship ritual. The beat grows quicker, the voices and the drum louder, the dancers ever closer to each other, eventually almost entwined. A more incongruous scene there could never be; this display of love, music, sexuality and life against a backdrop of silence, abandonment and decay.

When the dance is over, we decide to take a walk, crossing the river and broken road towards the top of the village. A half-finished church stands empty, and Leon takes me to a tumble-down shack where a faded image of Ma Tutu still hangs. She is wearing madras.

Homes give way to bush, rocks and boulders. A utility pole sags, holding on but perilously close to giving up the ghost. Nadia sits on a large rock in contemplation, her wob dwyet contrasting starkly with the bleakness. Fruit is ripening on a pommerac tree in the yard of Corinthia Defoe who recalls the night of the storm.

“I had nowhere to go so I just stayed in my home and watched the water rising all about,” she says. “It was big and brown, covering the road.”

“Were you afraid ?”

“Yes, oui. But I survive, thank God. ”

On the walk back down through the village the group tells me how draining it has been living in the community centre for so long.

“We’re on top of each other all the time,” says Julia, the group’s leader. “There’s no privacy at all. We are all looking forward to getting out of there.”

They hope and expect to be moving out of the community centre soon. Their new homes will be in an area of Grand Bay where mass produced, low cost housing from Venezuela, known as ‘petro casas’, or ‘oil houses’, are being constructed in a purpose-built community.

I ask what will happen to their homes and yards in Dubique once they have moved out of the community centre and resettled in new houses in Grand Bay. But no-one really knows, nor has a plan. In fact there’s a sense of embarrassment at not really having an answer. They speculate that perhaps they will come and grow vegetables in their yard but I sense that memories of the storm will always be in their minds and that they are eager for the chance to move on and make a clean and fresh start.

“But we will always be from Dubique,” says Nadia resolutely. “It is our home, our heritage, and always in our hearts.”

Natural Farming

July 1, 2025 Comments Off Freelance

“You’re probably wondering what’s going on here,” says Kenny Blandford with a smile as we begin our tour of his farm. “I’m guessing it’s not what you were expecting.”

He’s referring to the fact that Cocoa Valley Eco Farm doesn’t have tilled soil with vegetables or ground provisions growing in neat rows, not even raised beds made of tree stumps and old galvanised sheeting. There are no orderly orchards, no gravel paths, no neatly trimmed grass. At first glance, it seems like six acres of unruly bush—and in some ways, it is. But take an educational tour, and subtle, important differences soon emerge.

This is what Kenny calls natural farming. At first, it can seem chaotic—but the more he explains the interactions, connections, and the science of soil, the clearer the structure and intention behind it all become.

The tour begins with a shallow wade across the Pagua River, just outside the hamlet of Concord on the northern edge of Dominica’s Kalinago Territory, and follows a roughly beaten track climbing gradually uphill. Keen to explain the farm’s appearance, Kenny crouches and carefully parts the undergrowth.

“The basic idea is to mimic nature as much as possible,” he says. “We minimise our impact by not interfering with natural processes. And key to that is soil management. What you may view as a blanket of weeds, we see as essential ground cover that protects the soil from harmful UV light while also maintaining moisture and an environment for organics to thrive. There’s no tilling, no weeding, and absolutely no chemicals.”

“Take a spade or a hoe,” Kenny continues, “and you turn living, thriving soil like this into inert dirt. Add fertilizer or chemicals, and it’s the same story—you kill the natural processes. The plants become junkies, dependent on artificial fixes to survive.”

No-till soil management is becoming a more common practice in gardens and natural farms such as this one, whereby minimum disturbance helps to protect soil health and structure, organic matter, and ‘beneficial biological communities’ that thrive in undisturbed humus. Crop rotation is also considered important for this kind of farming though Kenny questions the need for it.

“Based on my experience here,” he says, “banana plants such as these have established relationships with the soil and everything else that grows around. If I break that and plant somewhere else, then it must start over and reestablish these relationships. So, while they continue to be healthy and productive, I see no reason to impose my will on them. Nature knows best.”

“I’m often asked about weeds competing for the same resources as the crops that we plant. We’re led to believe it’s beneficial to pull them out. But that only happens if your soil is poor or inert, and there are not enough resources to go around. The same happens if you add chemicals. But if your soil is healthy, everything lives in balance. Just look around.”

It’s hard to argue with Kenny’s logic. His knowledge is self-taught and experiential; his enthusiasm, infectious.

As its name suggests, the farm’s dominant crop is cocoa, though there are many other interesting things growing here. The bananas, for example, are the kinds of varieties that were present before large commercial crops of cavendish took over and became the backbone of the so-called Caribbean ‘banana boom’ of the mid to late 1900s. These older varieties grow as tall as trees and their bunches are the biggest I’ve ever seen.

The farm is so productive that Kenny has been feeding his family from it for around five years. With a background in traditional farming, he gave up his job in tourism during the pandemic and redirected his efforts into producing food for his wife and seven children. They all get involved in the day-to-day tasks, and his eldest son, O’Brian, has become accomplished at grafting cocoa plants. Together, they’ve constructed a clay oven which they use to bake bread made from their banana and breadfruit flour.

We walk past a large hole that has recently been excavated.

“Tilapia pond,” says Kenny, grinning. “Coming soon, I hope.”

As I follow Kenny and O’Brian through ankle-deep ground cover, they point out and offer me different varieties of guava, we see lemon trees that are so full they’re tipping over, huge golden apples, pineapples peeking out of vines and weeds, avocado trees, coconut palms, and ever more towering banana plants. What first seemed like randomness and entanglement is beginning to reveal a quiet logic. Companion planting, shade growing, nitrogen fixing, regular spacing, bird-attracting ornamentals—my head spins trying to take it all in.

“We don’t just plant a young cocoa tree in the ground,” O’Brian explains. “We’ve learned to plant pigeon pea next to every cocoa. The pigeon peas grow quickly, providing the cocoa with nitrogen and shade. And they also feed our family.”

In their large greenhouse are all the plants they are currently propagating. There seem to be hundreds of cocoa saplings as well as a healthy supply of other young trees such as cherry, avocado, breadnut, and more.

“We try to maintain a regular stock. Many are grafted, some are grown from seed,” says Kenny. “These plants will either go out into the farm or they’ll be sold to other specialist farmers and gardeners, giving us a source of income.”

I had been wondering about that. While the farm feeds the family, there are still life essentials that require money.

“That’s true. And it’s why we’re now developing our farm tour and inviting locals and visitors to come and look at what we’re doing. Having said that, a freshly peeled lemon works excellently as a deodorant. Do you think I smell?”

He doesn’t, and I make a mental note to experiment with said citrus.

“But make sure you peel it,” O’Brian says with a smile. “Or you’ll be doing a dance. It stings!”

The tour lasts around three hours and, by the end, I’m itching to plant the Surinam cherry tree I bought and look at my garden through new eyes. But first, Kenny and O’Brian have invited me to taste some of their first attempts at chocolate-making. It’s coarse because they haven’t used a melanger (on their shopping list), but what strikes me most are the strong fruity flavours, which I assume were added during processing.

“Not at all,” says O’Brian. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Those flavours come from the fruit trees growing alongside the cocoa we harvest. My favourite is the cherry.”

Mine too. It’s quite a jaw-dropping moment. I’m one of those people who struggles to identify ‘notes’ in coffee or a glass of rum. But this was easy—and any doubts I may have harboured about the interconnectedness of plants and trees through healthy soil were swept away by this small piece of chocolate.

Back across the river, I wave goodbye to Kenny and O’Brian, knowing I’ll be back. These days, we’re inundated with cruise ships and seemingly endless festivals, but Cocoa Valley Eco Farm is proof that another Dominica still exists—quiet, grounded, and thriving beneath the radar, rooted in the fertile soil of a resilient Nature Island.

This article featured in the July/August 2025 edition of Caribbean Beat magazine

Kalinago Chief

January 1, 2025 Comments Off Freelance

On 22 July 2024, Anette Thomas-Sanford made history as the first woman elected Chief of Dominica’s Kalinago Territory. I catch up with her beneath the karbet at the Kalinago Barana Auté cultural site in Crayfish River, one of the eight hamlets of the 1580ha semi-autonomous region on Dominica’s rugged east coast. She looks elegant, her sunflower yellow dress glowing brightly in the morning light. I’d suggested a casual meeting rather than anything formal, so when she places a rather ornate and beautiful handmade feather crown on her head, we both laugh. It’s perfect.

Anette’s easy-going nature masks a busy and often difficult life, and her slight, almost fragile frame conceals a remarkably strong and resolute character. Now 42, married with three children, she grew up in hardship in the hamlet of Sineku at the southern margin of the Kalinago Territory. Her mother died when she was seven years old, and her father, a farmer, did his best to provide for the family.

“My siblings and I were all quite bright when it came to study, but we didn’t have the same access to books and other resources as other kids. So, it was difficult to keep up. My two sisters dropped out to help in the home and those of us lucky enough to stay in school took our education very seriously.”

At the time, Sineku was viewed as a relative backwater in the Territory, with poverty and social issues such as delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and drugs ever present. As a result, Sineku people were somewhat stigmatised, which made growing up there even harder. Today, the social and financial challenges for many Kalinago families across the Territory are similar, though international organisations such as the World Bank and European Commission have at least been able to finance the construction of improved housing.

“When you pass through the Territory, you’ll see better homes than in those days, but beyond the attractive façade, social issues remain. There’s still an inability for many families to make ends meet, pay for their children’s schoolbooks, uniforms and so on. Poverty is ever present. So, I think the biggest challenge for us right now is how to improve our economy.”

Dominica Kalinago Chief Anette Sanford. Photo by Paul Crask

Established by the Kalinago Act in 1903, the Territory currently has around 2,500 permanent residents. It’s administered by the Kalinago Council, Kalinago Chief, and a parliamentary representative. The Kalinago Act determined that all lands within the Territory remain communal, so no individual has the right of ownership. In a contemporary context, this presents problems.

“People in the Territory cannot go to a bank, present their land title, and apply for a loan to send their children to study, kick start a business, or improve their home. No access to credit means that families here are left behind. It’s a huge challenge for us.”

“Discussions are taking place within the communities about amending the Act in this regard, but there are advantages and disadvantages to doing so. I think that perhaps the best solution is to try to create and fund a credit organisation of our own within the Territory. But, of course, in a similar way to any bank, this would require significant funding, transaction policies, regulation, and so on. But in the event of repossession, land would default back to the Kalinago Council rather than to any outside organisation. In this way, the principle and integrity of shared ownership of Territory land would, albeit in a slightly different way, remain.”

At school, Anette aspired to become a doctor, but scholarships were hard to come by, so she trained and worked as a nurse. Then came a spell in politics where, despite losing her constituency election, she entered parliament as an opposition senator. After her party refused to contest the 2022 snap general election, Anette left politics and focused instead on developing projects in the Territory via a non-government organisation (NGO). Despite her previous political affiliation, she won the 2024 Kalinago Chief election with 57% of the popular vote.

“I think people have seen enough of what I’ve been doing to understand that I want to help all Kalinago people and that my work transcends red and blue politics. With such a small population, I believe such divisive politics is detrimental to our situation and, in the future, I’d like to see the Kalinago Chief in parliament instead of a constituency politician. We’re stronger as a people if we’re together as a people. But it’s not always easy to overcome this. It’s a sad fact that how you vote can influence your personal circumstances.”

The Kalinago Territory is unique in the Caribbean, contributing to Dominica’s complex and fluid cultural identity as a developing, independent nation. Like other islands, most of Dominica’s population is descended from Africans who were enslaved by Europeans. However, a minority are descendants of the indigenous people who inhabited the island before Columbus arrived.

“I suppose I see myself first as Kalinago, and second as Dominican. As indigenous people, we’re a minority and I think that to retain our identity, it’s important to stand up for who we are and have a voice both at home and abroad. There are Kalinago professionals who are doing well, and the President of Dominica is not only Kalinago, but also a woman. So, we’re pushing through barriers and must continue to do so. I think it would be great for Dominica to revert to its indigenous name, Wai’tukubuli, and I’d support anyone who pushed for that, though given all the other challenges we face, it’s probably quite far down my list right now.”

“It’s important for us to connect and network with other indigenous people in the Caribbean and Americas and I’ve already started to do that. I think cultural exchange visits would be especially beneficial to Kalinago people. But we must try to fund this kind of activity by our own means rather than rely on government assistance. I believe there are organisations out there that can help us with this.”

Despite her obvious inner strength, I wonder how Anette plans to manage her five-year term as Chief while also being a wife and mother of three. When we were trying to organise our meeting, she hinted that since her inauguration, she’d been so busy that she had barely had time to relax.

“It’s true that my life has been pretty hectic lately. But I’m learning to organise my time. I try to keep Sundays completely free for my family, and spending quality time with my children helps me to unwind, as does working on our little farm where I’m planting fruits and flowers. When I go there, it’s my quiet time and I can let go all the stresses of the week.”

There’s no doubt that Anette has her work cut out, and negotiating the multitude of hurdles ahead will be difficult. At the end of her term in office, I ask how she hopes the Kalinago Territory will have changed.

“I’m hoping to see infrastructural improvements, but the biggest priority would be to see families more able to provide for and sustain themselves. I’d like farmers to be doing well and for the Territory to have new agro-processing enterprises providing farmers with a market as well as being successful in their own right. I’d like us to establish more cross-community cultural activities, such as the enhancement of Kalinago Week, and I’d like Dominica and the Caribbean region to recognise and get to know more about the Kalinago people. We survived, we’re here and we’re alive. The spirits of our ancestors live within us, and we have a story that is still unfolding.”

This article featured in the January/February 2025 edition of Caribbean Beat magazine